re: I don't think Alabama will win Saturday

If they keep them out if the endzone on their first possession, I think Bama wins.

Turn your BAMA man card back in!!!!

I am absolutely not being homer when I say this but I am convinced that not only will Bama win Saturday I believe they will win big.

I watched the Bama - VT game numerous times and I am convinced of a few things:

1. Bama's OL wasn't as bad as they looked - What I saw was a serious stubbornness in the play calling and a lack of execution not bad play, a lack of experience seemed to be the biggest issue especially with live bullets so to speak. It was a perfect situation to have a game under their belts and film to bark about for 2 straight weeks, yeah Bama could've gone 4 and 5 wide and tossed it around and made the D respect the pass but they didn't so even on pass plays VT's D teed off and brought the house on blitz schemes.

2. Va Tech's D was really good and experienced - I kept watching over and over and thought the idea and felt crazy for thinking it until I heard another ESPN Football analyst Trevor Matich, who played college and pro football, on Finebaums radio show say the same exact thing...after watching most SEC teams we will face that VT has the best looking Defense we will see, even better than LSU. That defense stacked the box and played man to man on the outside WRs an easy scheme unless you can dial the pressure with blitzing schemes and Foster was a wizard. They knew they were undermanned and smaller but also knew the DL and LB corps was experienced and Bama's OL wasn't so the plan worked to throw the kitchen sink at the OL and man up on the outside back end zones and the pressure the OL couldn't shake was what threw everything out of whack.

3. The flow of the game because of the Special Teams and D scores was weird - Bama was up early because of the other scores and allowed a lot less urgency to score on Offense...a nice problem to have, but for an offense struggling like Bama's was it can make the offense look anemic

These 3 factors are what gave me hope for this Saturday, I also know this is the game the staff has used as motivation, the VT game a lot of the team didn't seem motivated and was just going through the motions. I expect the whole mentality of the team to be vastly different on Saturday

I could be extremely wrong but it has been apparent to me even in recruiting how every waking moment building this team's D was geared toward stopping a spread attack and downfield passing attacks, guys have all lost weight and gotten quicker and the D was visibly faster. The 1 breakdown on the long TD run was the wrong scheme and a bad tackling attempt on a scheme Bama had no idea VT would run (Saban even said they watched a lot of film and didnt see a single read option scheme with Loeffler's O they broke down out of that scheme) I don't expect Kirby or Saban to make a similar mistake on Saturday, they know what schemes aTm runs, it's the unexpectedness of Manziel and I suspect we will see a QB spy or more effective a run blitz on one side and a contain scheme on the other. It will be interesting to see what Kirby uses. I hope Johnny is ready and not hung over from the Drake OVO convert you can bet he will be at the night before.

I have not made a prediction on this game yet but I will probably on Friday, still have to watch aTm vs SHSU

You should be a sports writer. If you're not already.

I'm pretty confident we'll get the job done. The main thing that worries me honestly is the projected high temperatures combined with A&M's HUNH and our lack of experienced depth on the DL. Looks like we'll be relying heavily on some true freshmen on the DL and while they're talented it's imperative that the know their responsibilities and be disciplined or else they'll create big running lanes for JFF.

Also, I hope we won't be so reluctant to use our timeouts if our D is tired or confused.

Bama wins in a bloodbath.

Everybody is overreacting the the 3 games these two teams have played. The good isn't as good as it's looked, and the bad isn't as bad as it's looked .... for either team.

In the end, Bama has better players and better coaches top to bottom.

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You should be a sports writer. If you're not already.

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This is encouraging since I've been stressing these same points and I'm going to be a sports writer

I don't either, but I've said that about nearly every other big game. I just don't think we will have improved as much as we need to. A cupcake game would've been nice last week.


ETA: And I don't just mean offense. I'm more worried about the defense than the offense.

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Saw quite a bit of this in games this past weekend (college and NFL). We haven't done it in the past, but people keep saying stop whining about HUNH and deal with it. Well, that's 1 way to deal with it.

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I view the HUNH as a bullshite strategy for beating teams by causing confusion and fatigue rather than out-manuevering them with clever playcalling and creative gameplanning, so I have no problems using a bush league strategy like faking minor injuries to counteract it. Fight fire with fire and what not.

I just watched the first quarter of the VT game again. The second drive when Yeldon scored the td was a pretty nice drive. The offense was mixing it up pretty well. After that the offense went vanilla. I'm not too concerned about the offense. There ARE problems with the ol but I believe when they are not trying to run the ball every down that they will hold their own.